Shifting his gaze from the half-decapitated fighter to the tracker swaying on his feet, Archer realized they were losing this battle.
Niall’s gaze grew distant as he listened to more reports. Archer knew he was piecing all the information together in search of patterns and possibilities. Having barely escaped the Irish famine, he hungered now for the details that let him lead a ragtag band of demon slayers toward the glory to save their souls.
His expression said their prospects were about as appealing as the last potato collapsing into black rot. “Bookie, what have you found out about this Corvus?”
Bookie looked as road-worn as the rest, ruddy features blanched. “The league register has one possible match: a Corvus Valerius, possessed back in Nero’s day.”
A murmur swept the room. Such a long possession indicated a demon of incredible power. The demon would need to keep human flesh alive through centuries of cellular decay and the inevitable madness of isolation brought on by such unnatural longevity. And, of course, win every battle with every angelic host it encountered.
How dark must the djinni be to never release its stranglehold on one man? And how twisted must that man be? Archer’s own heart withered at the thought.
Bookie went on. “The register says Corvus was an arena slave who fought his way to gladiator rank. On the verge of earning his freedom, he was pitted against three cannibal savages, a lion and a bear, and an alleged Amazon—at the same time. He lost. League chronicles from then on repeat variations on the Corvus name.”
“Why the bid for apocalypse now?” Archer wondered aloud.
Bookie shrugged. “Because he can?”
“There’s never been a better time,” Jonah said. “Or should I say, a worse time. Today, one bomb maims hundreds, one disease wipes out thousands, one dictator dooms millions to poverty and terror.” In his vehemence, blood trickled from his barely knit flesh. “Evil isn’t just beating us. It’s pointing and laughing and racking up frequent-flier miles too.”
“Well, statistically,” Bookie said, “there are more people on the planet, so of course more people bleed, suffer, and die.”
Niall rubbed a hand over his face. “So now God is a numbers runner? If anybody’s running, it’s us, out of options.”
“Not really,” Bookie said. “Do what you’ve always done. Just keep playing along.”
Ecco stiffened. “Excuse me?”
“The angels and djinn fight a holy war that can never be won. The teshuva fight for a redemption they can never earn. And you all are just along for the beating.” Bookie tapped the papers against his leg. “Keep up the good work and nothing has to change.”
Archer’s gut twisted at Bookie’s interpretation, even though he’d come to the same revelation a long time ago—though not so long ago as Corvus, who’d apparently decided to end the stalemate.
In some sick way, he understood. As Sera had said, empathy meant feeling, truly feeling, another’s pain. He had less than two centuries to Corvus’s two millennia. Now that she’d brought his emotions back to life, reminded him what it was to fear, he could only dread what Corvus was capable of, having lived ten times the agony.
Bookie cleared his throat. “I’ve also finished the workup on the most recent possessed.”
Archer lifted one eyebrow. “Sera.”
Bookie shrugged indifferently. “Her technique for dispatching malice brought up some disturbing questions—”
“Skip to the point, man,” Jonah said.
Bookie glowered over the rim of his glasses. “The continued tenebrae activity is due to persistent damage in the Veil. And she is the one preventing the Veil from sealing.”
“The Veil is always in flux after a crossing,” Ecco said. “Although not so long, usually. Her teshuva—”
“Not her teshuva,” Bookie snapped. “She.” His gaze narrowed on Archer. “Sera.”
Archer felt a chill go through him. “How? She’s human. Demon-ridden, yes, but still human.” Suddenly, the distinction seemed terribly elemental to him.
Bookie frowned. “In the ESF reading, Sera’s soul force radiates outward into our realm, conjoined with the demon, just like any talya/teshuva possession. But her soul force also cascades backward along her teshuva’s remaining umbilical. Through the Veil. Into the tenebraeternum.” He gave a little shrug, with an expression like reluctant admiration. “You could almost say that instead of the demon possessing her, she is riding the demon.”
Archer stiffened. “No one would choose to be possessed.”
“That’s your occupational myopia. If you’d look around, you’d see people are capable of more than you suppose, all on their own.”
Reluctantly, Archer considered Sera’s history. Between her mother’s suicide, her career in death, her accident, her relentless delving into mysteries with no answers, maybe she hadn’t chosen to bargain her soul, but a conspiracy of circumstances had cut off any other path.
Niall asked, “What does this mean to Corvus’s plan?”
The pages in Bookie’s hand crinkled as he clenched them. “I can’t say. I just thought it was interesting. Has to make one question Sera’s intent, unconscious or not. And, actually, the true strain of her demon since it apparently crossed over in response to Corvus’s tweaking the Veil.”
Valjean straightened. “You think we’ve been harboring a djinn all along?”
Archer took a step forward. “No.”
“Djinn or teshuva, the flaw in the Veil remains,” Bookie said, “so it doesn’t really matter either way.”
Jonah sputtered. “She’s conspiring to free all the denizens of hell, and you don’t think that matters?”
Archer spun on the other man. “Sera does not want to destroy the Veil. She fights for us.”
Jonah scowled. “I won’t risk losing my soul just because you’ve lost your head fucking a djinn whore—”
Archer punched him. He aimed the short, vicious blow for the neck wound. Fragile, new flesh parted under his knuckles, and blood sprayed. Jonah reeled back, falling to his knees.
With a harmonized shout, the other talyan piled on Archer, pinning his arms. He braced his legs against their weight so they couldn’t take him down but stood unresisting.
He stared at Jonah through narrowed eyes as Niall helped the other man to his feet, hand clamped over the reopened wound.
Niall scowled at Archer reprovingly. “He wasn’t hurt enough?”
Archer cocked his head, assessing. “I could punch a hole in the other side, even him up, since he’s such a stickler for appearances.”
Jonah croaked something unintelligible. Niall led him to the lobby chairs and handed the bleeding talya a decorative pillow. “Hold that against your neck until it clots.”
Ecco chortled. “Now we see how our fine gent here is part of her connection to the demon realm.”
Bookie, who’d put half the room between himself and the scuffle, halted his retreat. “What do you mean?”
“You said you saw the link to the demon realm in the spectrograph. What I saw on the ESF recorder down in the lab were three strands. The thin umbilical of Sera’s demon, and piggybacked on that, Sera’s bright soul line. And then the third line, stronger and darker than the others. Archer.”
Archer remembered the braid of light pictured on the screen, the three strands in an intricate weaving dance. “The third strand would be the malice.”
Ecco shook his head. “No way would the emanations from a single malice show up as such a high-amplitude wavelength. And it’s the amps that get you. Sound like anyone we know?” He hooked his thumb meaningfully at Archer.
Everyone stared at Ecco. He shrugged. “Shit, guys. I’m not just a pretty face, and I do know my malice.”